Articles in The 'Unnatural Links' Tag

Avoid Inbound Links from Site-wide Elements to Help Avoid Penguin

by Matt Crowley

Although many people have heard about Google’s Penguin Algorithm updates and know that they can have a large impact on their website’s presence within Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs), many of those same people aren’t aware of issues that may cause a website to be affected by them. While there are many things that can cause your website’s presence to be affected by these updates, we have seen one common pain point within the SEO industry.   This is when websites have inbound links from site-wide elements that do not fall within Google’s Quality Guidelines.

Site-wide links include any link that can be found on every page of a website. These are often contained within a website’s site-wide footer or sidebar. For example, if site A has a link to a page on site B within its site-wide footer, this would create a link on every page of site A pointing to the page on site B.   When this occurs, a new link to the page on site B is created any time site A creates a new page on its site. This can result in thousands to hundreds of thousands of links being created that originate from one website and point to a single page.

In some cases, this is normal. If a corporation has multiple websites and each contains a site-wide footer link pointing back to a main privacy policy page, this is not likely to negatively affect any of the sites. However, there are many reasons that site-wide links can negatively affect a website’s presence within Google’s SERPs. The first is that site-wide inbound links are against Google’s Quality Guidelines if used improperly. Google states that websites should avoid “widely distributed links in the footers of various websites.” Although it is unlikely that linking to a privacy policy page would be problematic, there are situations in which it can be.

One common case is when a website has site-wide inbound links from partner websites. To be clear, this is not always problematic, but if the linking is done improperly it can become problematic. One of the reasons that this type of site-wide inbound link can be problematic is that there can be large fluctuations in the amount of inbound links originating from one domain. For example if site A is an ecommerce website with hundreds of thousands of pages and contains a site-wide link to site B, there could be thousands of links lost or gained each week based upon how often site A updates it’s product pages. When there are such large fluctuations in a site’s inbound link portfolio, Google’s algorithm will likely take notice.

If you are utilizing a website for your business, and especially if you are utilizing multiple websites, it is extremely important to consistently check your inbound link portfolio. You can find out more information about who is linking to your website in our blog post about Google Webmaster Tools. If you notice a large amount of inbound links originating from a single domain, it is important to take a closer look. Ensure that any site-wide inbound links fall within Google’s quality guidelines and consider having an SEO professional analyze all of the inbound links pointing to your website.